CAPACITY PLANNING FOR MICROSTRATEGY 9 PLATFORM

SIZING DISCLAIMER
It is important to note that the information provided in this document is based on certain assumptions on the nature of the current and future MicroStrategy application. These assumptions are based on discussions with members of the Caixa de Prevedencia dos Func Banco do project team. All performance benchmark values and capacity estimations are provided AS IS and no warranties or guarantees are expressed or implied by MicroStrategy Inc. Actual system performance may vary and is dependent upon many factors including system hardware configuration and software design and configuration. Recommendations provided in this document are based on estimates and information currently available and provided to MicroStrategy. The configurations outlined in this document should not be applied to a production environment without performing stress testing in a staging environment. It is extremely important to test and make adjustments before the new configurations are released to the end users.

SYSTEM OVERVIEW AND FACTS

Following usage information and facts regarding the system under sizing are obtained from the client through our capacity planning questionnaire and emails. These are as detailed as the client may have them at the time of writing. 1. Current system is running MicroStrategy 9.0.2 on Win32, client is planning to upgrade to 9.2.1 on Win64 with User license. 2. Currently, there are 45 users using the system in production, this number may reach 200 in the end of 2013, which is around 4 times of current user base. Client plans to have 20 users in development environment and testing environment. 3. Existing Intelligence Server and web server are hosted on E7450 @ 2.4 GHZ*, the machine spec can be found here. Currently 2 virtual cores are allocated to Intelligence Server with 4 GB of memory. Client plans to re-use the existing Intelligence Server hardware after the upgrade. 4. Existing Mobile Server is hosted on E5440 @ 2.83 GHZ *, the machine spec can be found here. Currently 1 virtual core is allocated to Intelligence Server with 4 GB of memory. Client plans to re-use the existing Intelligence Server hardware after the upgrade.

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For production environment, client provided system resource utilization (CPU%, MEM%) from Intelligence Server, web server, mobile server from 1/2/2012 ~ 8/2/2012. Besides, client provided Enterprise Manager report covering the Intelligence Servers statistic from 23/1/2012 7/2/2012.

ASSUMPTIONS
To be able to provide hardware sizing estimates for a future system, in addition to the information provided to us, we further made following assumptions: 1. 2. We assume the Enterprise Manager report and system resource utilization information provided to us contains the systems true peak usage window. Based on the EM report, the system were most busy on 25/1/2012, however since the system resource usage log files were not provided on 25/1/2012, we assume the workload on 25/1/2012 is around 1.3 times of workload on 2/2/2012, which is derived from EM report. We assume all the hardware spec provided to us for the existing and future hardware of the Intelligence Server, Web Server and mobile server are accurate. We assume the workload brought upon by the increase of new users will be similar to the current workload, therefore extrapolation technique based on linear scalability can be utilized. (If client expect significant different usage pattern or functionalities, we should revisit this sizing exercise given more detailed information is provided to us.) We assume the usage pattern and object design in development environment and testing environment are the same as those in production environment.

3. 4.

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SYSTEM USAGE ANALYSIS

The Enterprise Manager report shows the current system is most busy between 12:00PM~13:00PM on 25/1/2012. There are 79 job executions during this time. From the EM report, it appears the peak workload on 25/1/2012 is around 1.3 times of peak workload in 2/2/2012. Since the system resource usage log files on 25/01/2012 were not provided, our analysis is based on the system resource utilization occurred during 11:00AM~12:00PM on 2/2/2012.

Figure 1 EM Report PREVI533(IServer and web server)

It shows the CPU utilization by MSTRSvr process captured from virtual machine stays at very low level with maximum of 15%. Please see Figure 2 for detail.

Figure 2 CPU Usage by IServer Further, with regard to Memory usage on the virtual machine, during the peak hours on 2/2/2012 between 11:00AM 12:00PM, the system used 2.1GB of memory, which is about 52.5% of memory space (4GB) in the system. This leaves about 1.9GB of real free memory as shown below in Figure 3. Besides, the process MSTRSvr occupied around 800MB memory space.

Figure 3 Memory Usage on PREVI533 The system resource usage information provided to us shows very low CPU utilization by web server with maximum at 2% (Figure 4).

Figure 4 CPU usage by web server PREVI506(Mobile Server) As shown in the Figure 5, the CPU resource is mostly idle, and the maximum usage is of 5%.

Figure 5 CPU usage by mobile server During the same logging period, Mobile Server consumed less than 1GB of memory as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6 Memory Usage by mobile server

RECOMMENDATION

Based on the system usage analysis in above section, here is our recommendation of servers on separated machines.

INTELLIGENCE SERVER

Intelligence Servers CPU resource is 15% used under peak workload on 2/2/2012. To support peak workload on 25/1/2012, IServer will require at least 4.1 SPECInt_rate2006 in CPU power, which is 1.3 times of CPU usage on 2/2/2012. We believe that one current virtual CPU should be sufficient. As to memory, current peak workload requires 68.25% for total memory space (4GB), it seems tight to upgrade MSTR to 9.2.1 on a 64 bit system. Thus, we recommend getting minimum of 8GB to support current peak workload for the upgraded system. In terms of workload in 2013, we recommend the configuration of 2 or 3 virtual cores (if using existing hardware) and minimum of 16GB memory for IServer.

Note: If large in-memory cubes are expected to be used or significantly more workload is planned to be added during the systems peak hours, more memory resource might be required. We can re-evaluate the memory requirement given more information regarding these aspects can be provided to us.

WEB SERVER

Web Servers CPU resource appears to be extremely underutilized under the peak workload on 2/2/2012. With another 30% workload on 25/1/2012, we recommend 1 virtual machine with 4GB memory for web server. With the projection of additional 300% workload increase in 2013, we expect Web Server to require minimum of 1 Virtual core with 4GB RAM in total on the proposed hardware.

MOBILE SERVER

Currently, mobile server utilizes maximum 5% CPU resource during the systems peak usage on 2/2/2012, which translated to 0.81 SPECInt_rate2006, to support 30% more workload on 25/1/2012, the mobile server may require minimum of 1.05 SPECInt_rate2006. Therefore, we recommend one virtual core with 4 GB memory to support the current workload. Since the proposed system is expected to support 4 times of current workload, we believe one-core configuration we recommended in last paragraph should be adequate. However, it seems a little tight to upgrade to 64 bit system, we recommend adding 4GB memory for workload in 2013.

Since client is interested in purchasing alternative hardware and having development of development and testing environment, we listed all the configurations in the following tables.
Note1: We would recommend customer purchasing a system with Intel Nehalem CPU, which typically provides over 30 SPECInt_rate2006 in processing power per CPU core. Note2: Since the information of how does client deploy IServer and web server is not provided to us at this point of writing, we recommend having IServer and web server on separate machines, which is consistent with MicroStrategys best practice.

IServer and web server are on separate machines Workload today (virtual CPU) Workload today (Intel Nehalem core) Workload in 2013(virtual CPU) Workload in 2013(Intel Nehalem core)

Intelligence Server # of cores Memory 1 8GB 1 8GB 2~3 16GB 1 16GB

Web Server # of cores 1 1 1 1

Memory 4GB 4GB 4GB 4GB

Mobile Server # of cores Memory 1 4GB 1 4GB 1 8GB 1 8GB

Table 1 Production Systems

Using virtual CPU (current hardware) Development Testing

Intelligence Server # of cores Memory 1 8GB 1 8GB

Web Server # of cores Memory 1 4GB 1 4GB

Mobile Server # of cores Memory 1 4GB 1 4GB

Table 2 Development system and Testing system

HARDWARE

There are many hardware configurations available on the market that can satisfy the requirement. We have provided a list of samples below as reference. Vendors HP System ProLiant DL360 G7 (3.46 GHz, Intel Xeon X5690) ProLiant DL380 G7 (3.33 GHz, Intel Xeon X5680) ProLiant BL460c G7 (3.20 GHz, Intel Xeon X5672) ProLiant BL460c G7 (2.67 GHz, Intel Xeon E5640) ProLiant DL380 G7 (2.93 GHz, Intel Xeon X5647) IBM IBM System x3550 M3 (Intel Xeon X5550) IBM System x3550 M3 (Intel Xeon X5560) IBM System x3550 M3 (Intel Xeon X5570) # of Cores 12 12 8 8 8 8 8 8 # of Chips 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 # of Cores Per Chip 6 6 4 4 4 4 4 4 SPECInt_ rate2006 417.0 426.0 305.0 253.0 270.0 251.0 257.0 265.0

Note: before purchasing any hardware, customer should consult individual vendors to confirm the desired hardware configuration provides sufficient scalability for the business need.